Analogue Synergy....Which is the best Cartridge?

Psychicanimal, I'm not a dealer, and I have no dog in this hunt. I own one cart with a VdH Type 1 stylus, an A-T with a Micro Linear, and the 103R. I go back far enough in record playing (about 30 years) to have had a few others. At least for me, I've found that the best way to insure minimal wear on my disks - regardless of which cart I am using - is to make sure the TT, arm, and cart are set up as well as possible and to treat my records with cleaning and preservation solutions. I'm hoping we can all agree with these basic requirements.

I have no microscopic analysis to prove it, but my records still seem to be in very fine shape. A friend who has copies of the same records (some 20 or so years old) sometimes comes over and brings his; in many cases there is a clear difference in the way his sounds (more noise, etc). He does not take as much care of his TT regimen as I do.

BTW, the pressure on the small surface area of a microridge or line contact type stylus will be on the order of 4-5 times that of a larger elliptical or spherical stylus tip. While I agree that a more modern tip is better suited to produce less wear, it is moreso because the shape is better suited to tracing the groove. When all's said and done, though, IMHO you have to really go out of your way to induce significant record wear on a private collection.

Take a look at this, and in particular the last major paragraph on this page.

http://www.micrographia.com/projec/projapps/viny/viny0300.htm

Thanks, Tony. Very good artricle--especially explaining saliva is used as a cleaning solvent!!!

This is from the link you provided:

Various refinements on the elliptical stylus principle have been developed, and are well explained and illustrated in this link to the Needle Express website FAQ page. The objective of all the design types is to increase the area of contact between the stylus and the wall of the groove in a vertical direction.

The high cost of these styli is a consequence of the careful grinding and polishing required to achieve the required profile, and the very exacting task of mounting the stylus in the cantilever so that the narrow axis of the ellipse is perpendicular to the line if the groove. This cost is offset somewhat by the reduced rate of wear on both stylus and records.

Thorsten, the European audio reviewer, states that he has a TT with two tonearms: one of them has a cartridge with a radial stylus because a lot of records were mastered with Scully lathes that electronically modified the musical signal to cancel the *distortions* caused by playing a record with a spherical stylus. If such is the case, then playing those recordings with a spherical stylus is the way to go and one more reason to prefer digital. That's why I have a belt drive transport reengineered by Dan Wright--to counteract the hassles of vinyl.

Danny Boy's my home boy, Audiofeil. Helped personally guiding me (along with Dusty Vawter, Kevin Barrett and Robert Ridge Street) and performing surgery on speakers and electronic x-over so that I would have the sound I now have.

Perhaps I'm wasting my money having Kevin @ KAB solder a Super Stereohedron stylus on this NOS Stanton Trackmaster I cartridge I got in eBay for $54.95. It already came with a radial stylus...

I'm in no hunt, Tony, but I'm against making people feel that a lot of money (or 'critical' conditions) are necessary in order to achieve sonic bliss--and if you don't you're a loser. That's why I used the outboard power supply examples. If Calgaryman does that he's going to have real trouble finding another belt drive that's worth the big money leap. I mean, look at Van Alstine-his gear is great sounding, well made, reliable and very seldom seen on the used market. My TT is better than his but he does make a real valid point: his TT is good enough.

Are you interested in trying one of them non resonant, Moca wood cartridge isolators that are soon to be passed around? I had a Moca board made for Sean's rack (amigo deal for my cable chef >>> free) and his comment was that Moca is about as perfect of a material as it can be. No Voodoo here--just good ol' Mother Nature at work. Stay tuned to AudioCircle.

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Sounds like a real nice bedroom system.

Congratulations.

I mean, look at Van Alstine-his gear is great sounding, well made, reliable and very seldom seen on the used market.

You're talking to someone who owns a FetValve 550EXR, and won't replace it for anything at 2-3 times its price, even if I wanted to spend the money.

I'm in no hunt, Tony, but I'm against making people feel that a lot of money (or 'critical' conditions) are necessary in order to achieve sonic bliss

I may be misunderstanding you, but I think you're sort of making the point for me, and others who believe a relatively inexpensive LOMC like the 103R is good. It is a great cart for the money; many believe it is a real contender against many of the best carts up to the $1K range. If it is used in a properly set up TT and the records are well cared for, record wear will be essentially a non-issue, as my previous link implied.

As a footnote to all these observations on record wear, I have to say that of the many thousands of records which I have examined, purchased and played over the years, only a very few were unlistenable on account of record wear, and these were from the earliest days of vinyl when the manufacturers advised collectors to play them with a pickup "of not more than 8 grams" (see previous page). All other rejected discs were unplayable due to accumulated crud in the grooves and physical abuse to the record surface. I have many records which are the best part of fifty years old, and as smooth and quiet as the day they were pressed.

Tony, I heard the FET/Valve @ the Chicago Audio Society a few years ago. Sean was there. I really liked its sonic presentation, clarity, dynamics & musicality. I recommended it to my brother in law. I still prefer my Marantz Ma-5 Esotec class A monoblocks, though.

As for the Denon 103-R, I would not recommend it (even if it was retipped every 500 hours). It's not cheap to properly do low output MC amplification and in most cases unnecesary and a bad compromise in the *punch* department. I get the midrange of a $1.5K moving coil and the punch & great trackability of a moving magnet with my modded DJ cartridge! The $54.95 Trackmaster I project is designed to take HF response where it should be. My NOS unit has half the coil windings of modern DJ cartridges (375 Ohm) and more extended HF response. Even with my power delivery/noise control rig I would have to really think it over before making the low output MC leap. Another issue is that the Denon was designed for the massive tonearms of the late 50's/early 1960's. New high mass tonearms tend to be very expensive nowadays, unless one gets an old Lenco or Garrard (EMT, too but not inexpensive).

There' been an unreasonable craze about starting vinyl rigs with low output moving coils. A lot of manufacturers have yielded to this pressure and made their units selectable for low output MCs when in fact they're not really designed for handling them. I still hold the massive cartridge bodies play a big part in the sound. That's one reason why I'm doing the Moca wood cartridge isolator experiment. You signing up?

A Linn Basik with a beefy external surplus power supply and a nice MM like the Stanton 681EEE would be outstanding. Installing a tonearm fluid damper and an Ortofon X5 high output MC would be a wake up call! If you search in the Vinyl Asylum you'll see that the X5 has been preferred by serious audiophiles over many other cartridges (after extended listening sessions). The AudioCircle moderator came to the same conclusion. The X5 is crystalline and airy without artificially bloating the soundstage. I got mine for $125 including shipping from Juki the Hong Kong pirate. Got to get the goodies at discount prices!!!

This is for the Audiofeil: VenHaus hand picks his Beta testers. Yours truly is one of them.

With psychic power and primal intensity,